Thursday, February 7, 2013

Battle Scars

You read it on baby center: how almost every woman on earth hates her stretch marks and is trying to eradicate them. I tend to think of the scars similar to marks on the lifeline of my palm.

And in a way this textured roadmap of my childbearing years is more interesting than an airbrushed picture anyway. I'm over that vanity. Vanity will always fail you anyway because nothing can always remain unblemished. I have only to look at the small wrinkles and increasingly grey hair in my mirror to realize that. It's not fair that I have aged 10 years in one, but this is reality.

I don't hate my scars, and in part, as I have written before, it is one of those reminders of Perry that will not be erased. The proof of his genesis and Emily's- two things I can never hate.

At the same time, I think it is also because it is sort of how I feel inside. Battled, perhaps ugly looking, but made primarily from love. Even if the scars are jagged, they would not be there if I did not care. The root of pain from loss is complicated, tethered to deep true emotions.

This body has done much better than I ever hoped, even with other losses mingled in. It continues to bless me everyday- and even without the aspect of pregnancy, my body lets me hold those I love. It lets me smile and cry. Dance and bend over with pain. Both, I now realize, very much a part of human life fully lived. The only people in life that will not have large losses at some point are those that held people far from them. Safe, but full of voids.

No comments:

Post a Comment